Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)

October 6, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, October 6, 2023, and National Noodle Day. Who doesn’t love noodles? My favorite are Szechuan style cold sesame noodles with peanut sauce (the BEST beginning for a Szechuanese meal):

It’s also National Denim Day, World Smile Day, Garlic Lovers Day (count me in), National Badger Day, German-American Day and the third day of World Space Week (October 4–10)

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the October 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Now this is truly a surprise: all of a sudden Joe Biden has decided to build new barriers along our border with Mexico, and barrier are what he campaigned against as President!

But facing a surge of migrants this year and sharp criticism even from some political allies, the Biden administration has backed away from its hard line on expanding the wall. The administration filed notice on Thursday that it was waiving more than 20 federal laws and regulations, including environmental ones, to build additional barriers along the Southern border.

With the shift, Mr. Biden finds himself helping to build a border wall that was one of the signature objectives of the Trump administration, even as he maintains that such barriers are ineffective in curbing unlawful entry from Mexico.

It is one of the starkest signs yet of the challenges Mr. Biden and his administration are wrestling with, as humanitarian crises across the world drive more migrants to the U.S. border while a deeply divided Congress leaves in place an outdated, dysfunctional immigration system.

News that the wall would be expanded broke as three members of Mr. Biden’s cabinet were traveling to Mexico for meetings with the country’s president on a host of issues, including migration and border security.

. . .One of the officials, Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said that easing the laws was necessary to expedite construction of sections of a border wall in South Texas, where thousands of migrants have been crossing the Rio Grande daily to reach U.S. soil.

“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States,” said Mr. Mayorkas in a notice published in the Federal Register on Thursday, adding that waiving laws and other requirements was necessary to complete the work more quickly in Starr County, Texas.

Well, I don’t know what to think. The idea of a wall somehow revulses me, though I recognize that there’s a need to curb illegal immigration. But I also recognize that without barriers, people will swarm across the southern borders to an extent that will overwhelm American services. I also don’t like barriers because they kill people.  I suppose I wish that a good bipartisan committee from both the House and Senate could iron out these problems, for Biden is just producing an unconsidered kneejerk solution to a problem that’s suddenly plaguing his administration.  Can we have humane but regulated immigration without barriers? Beats me.

*The AP has a long article on “the nones,” usually defined as someone with no formal affiliation with a church (“nones” can still be religious, but also include atheists). The article discusses the phenomenon in various regions of the globe, including the U.S., the Middle East, South America, Nigeria, Japan, India, and Italy.

Reader Norman saved me the trouble of reading it all by providing a summary:

Here are nine articles, covering six countries and two regions. Each article is similar in structure in that they focus on various people who have either lost interest in organized religion or never had an interest. Disillusionment because of scandal or cynicism that religion is all about money are fairly common reasons for not belonging. Lots of people (sadly) hold to alternative beliefs, such as astrology.

The articles have percentages sprinkled throughout, but I’m disappointed that there wasn’t a consistent methodology used across the countries and regions. I’d say that the piece—which is an entire website headed with links to the eight countries and regions—is more of a human-interest piece than anything else. It is far from a hard-hitting analysis. That said, I find it interesting that the Associated Press has even recognized the phenomenon.
It’s interesting that the AP chose Israel for special treatment. The U.N. gives “special“ treatment to Israel, too, for reasons that are less than honorable.
Sadly, according the article on the U.S., 79% of Americans believe in God and even the 43% who belong to no organized religion nonetheless believe in God or a higher power.
Read and weep:

*There’s been political conflict between Turkey and the U.S., but we are allies in NATO. Now there appears to be just a tad of military conflict as well, as the U.S. appears to have shot down a Turkish military drone:

A U.S. jet fighter shot down a Turkish drone Thursday after it was deemed a threat to U.S. forces in northeast Syria, a person familiar with the episode said.

The episode comes as Turkey has been mounting air attacks against Kurdish militants it blames for a bombing attack in Ankara on Sunday.

There are roughly 900 U.S. troops based in Syria, who have been working with Kurdish-led fighters to battle Islamic State.

The Turkish Defense Ministry said that the drone didn’t belong to the Turkish armed forces.

But one American official described it as an armed Turkish drone and said that the U.S. was aware of that before it acted.

The U.S. aircraft that downed the drone, which was armed with air-to-ground munitions, was an F-16. The action was taken as American troops were conducting operations nearby, a U.S. official said.

. . .While Turkish drones frequently operate in Syria, the downing came after Turkey declared that Kurdish militant facilities in Iraq and Syria were legitimate military targets.

Turkey said that operatives tied to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or the PKK, had traveled from Syria to conduct Sunday’s attack. Since then, Turkey has been conducting cross-border airstrikes and raids in northern Iraq against suspected PKK positions.

. . . “It’s a bold step by the U.S. It’s not every day that the U.S. takes down another NATO member’s drone,” said Charles Lister, director of the Syria counterterrorism programs at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. “This should only be read as an American message to Ankara to quit. But I don’t think the message will be received that way. Turkey sees the PKK as an existential threat, and they will continue to press on this issue.”

The PKK took responsibility for the recent suicide attack on Ankara that wounded two police officers, but the Turkish response has been massive. Yes, the PKK is a terrorist organization in Turkey, and they have the right to go after it. But since the drone may have harmed American troops, we also had the right to take it down. In the end, though I’m no fan of theocratic and despotic Turkish regime, this won’t hurt U.S./Turkish relations.

*In a piece called “An overdue lesson on antiracism,” NYT op-ed columnist Pamela Paul lectures us on the meaning of Ibram Kendi’s downfall. She goes pretty easy on Kendi, I must say and, like McWhorter (see yesterday’s post) tends to blame society, which thrust the man into a position he couldn’t handle. She does criticize his wonky views in How to Be an Antiracist, though, and that’s something for the NYT:

Among the book’s central tenets is that everyone must choose between his approach, which he called “antiracism,” and racism itself. It would no longer be enough for an individual or organization to simply be “not racist,” which Kendi called a “mask for racism” — they must instead be actively “antiracist,” applying a strict lens of racism to their every thought and action, and in fields wholly unrelated to race, in order to escape deliberate or inadvertent racist thinking and behavior. “What we say about race, what we do about race, in each moment, determines what — not who — we are,” Kendi wrote.

Kendi’s antiracism prescription meant that universities, corporations and nonprofits would need to remove all policies that weren’t overtly antiracist. In the Boston University English department’s playwriting M.F.A. program, for example, reading assignments had to come from “50 percent diverse-identifying and marginalized writers,” and writers of “white or Eurocentric lineage” had to be taught through “an actively antiracist lens.” Antiracism also requires a commitment to other positions, including active opposition to sexism, homophobia, colorism, ethnocentrism, nativism, cultural prejudice and any class biases that supposedly harm Black lives. To deviate from any of this is to be racist. Either you’re with us or you’re against us.

Yet, as the psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt pointed out, Kendi’s dichotomy is “incorrect from a social-science perspective because there are obviously many other remedies,” including ones that address social, economic and cultural disparities through a fairer distribution of resources.

When a Minneapolis police officer murdered Floyd in May 2020, Kendi’s book, with its propitious, here-is-what-you-must-do-now title, became the bible for anyone newly committed to the cause of racial justice. Schools and companies made it required reading. So many campuses made it their class read, all-school read or community read that the publisher created a full set of reading and teaching guides for them. (Employees at the publishing house, Penguin Random House, were told to read it as the first “true companywide read” to begin “antiracism training mandatory for all employees.”) Universities used Kendi’s antiracist framework as the basis by which applicants’ required diversity statements would be judged.

. . .In short, a person can oppose racism on firm ethical or philosophical or pragmatic grounds without embracing Kendi’s conception of antiracism. No organization can expect all employees or students to adhere to a single view on how to combat racism.

. . . In the meantime, the best that could come out of this particular reckoning would be a more nuanced and open-minded conversation around racism and a commitment to more diverse visions of how to address it.

Somehow I think that Paul, who used to have more fire, is being easier on Kendi than she feels. (After all, the man promulgated ideas that were both ridiculous and divisive.) If I were uncharitable, I would have given her column an allitative title: “Pamela Paul Pulls Her Punches.”

Here’s a new 7-minute bit of the discussion between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter on whether one should feel Schadenfreude about Kendi’s downfall. They get into it pretty hard, though of course they don’t raise their voices. McWhorter even accuses Loury of “not applying his full mental capacities to understanding Kendi,” which is kind of like calling Loury stupid. But Loury gets one in at McWhorter by accusing the NYT of corruption, noting that McWhorter, oof course, can’t talk about that.  And that’s true.

*The new Nature shows us what Earth’s continents will look like in 250 million years.

Earth is currently thought to be in the middle of a supercontinent cycle1 as its present-day continents drift. The last supercontinent, Pangaea, broke apart about 200 million years ago. The next, dubbed Pangaea Ultima, is expected to form at the equator in about 250 million years, as the Atlantic Ocean shrinks and a merged Afro-Eurasian continent crashes into the Americas.

Just think of all the interchange of flora and fauna that will take place then! But WAIT! That can’t happen because the earth won’t be a viable place for most life at that time:

Up to 92% of Earth could be uninhabitable to mammals in 250 million years, researchers predict. The planet’s landmasses are expected to form a supercontinent, driving volcanism and increases to carbon dioxide levels that will leave most of its land barren.

“It does seem like life is going to have a bit more of a hard time in the future,” says Hannah Davies, a geologist at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. “It’s a bit depressing.”

A bit? It’s not just us who will be gone (though believe me, we’ll take over all the habitable parts of the globe), but nearly all plants and animals, who simply can’t find suitable habitat. Bye, bye, penguins!

Have a look at the temperatures then:

But wait! There’s more:

Modelling the climate of the new supercontinent, described on 25 September in Nature Geoscience Alexander Farnsworth at the University of Bristol, UK, and his colleagues found that much of Pangaea Ultima will experience temperatures of higher than 40 °C, making it uninhabitable to most mammalian life. As they merge together and then drift apart, the continents will drive volcanic activity that “spews huge amounts of CO2 up into the atmosphere”, says Farnsworth, and that will heat up the planet.

Regions in the middle of the supercontinent, far from the oceans, would turn into deserts that are unliveable “expect for very specialized mammals”, says Farnsworth. The lack of moisture would also diminish the amount of silica that is washed into the oceans, which usually removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

In a worst-case scenario, in which CO2 levels reach 1,120 parts per million, more than double current levels, just 8% of the planet’s surface — coastal and polar regions — would be habitable to most mammalian life, compared with about 66% today.

Well, hominins have been here for only about six million years, which is 1/40th of the time we’re talking about, but those poor plants and animals! Oy!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, we have a nice photo of Hili pondering:

Hili: I think I should go there.
A: Do you see something interesting?
Hili: No. I’m consulting my intuition.
In Polish:
Hili: Sądzę, że powinnam tam pójść.
Ja: Widzisz coś ciekawego?
Hili: Nie, konsultuję się z moją intuicją.

And Leon has returned with a monologue!

Leon:  I announce the opening of the pillow-house season  (In Polish: “Ogłaszam otwarcie sezonu poduszkowo- domowego.”)

x

*******************

From Merilee, an anxious burgler (cat burglar?)”

From Stephen. This is a real headline; more on an upcoming Caturday:

From a list of “hilarious wedding announcements” I found somewhere on the Internet:

From Masih; another girl beaten nearly to death by the Iranian morality police for wearing a hijab improperly. She may well die—in a manner similar to Mahsa Amini.

A long satirical story by Titania (be sure to click “show more”):

From Colin. If you click on the picture, you’ll see that the Transgender World Cup Swimming Races were canceled because nobody wanted to compete:

From Simon, who says of the second tweet, “not even pumpkin spiced”:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, an escapee who didn’t make it:

Tweets from Doctor Cobb. First, the wonders of natural selection, with mimicry involving color, behavior, and position of arms:

Sound MUST be up!:

And receipts are FREE!

28 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue (and Leon monologue)”

  1. I thought the Atlantic was currently getting wider. When will it start shrinking? I guess there are two phenomena going on: widening due to more magma coming up from the central ridge, and movement of tectonic plates. Anyway, it’s interesting to know Earth will be unlivable in 250 million years. I was afraid we’d have to wait for the Sun to explode in 5 billion years. And here I was counting on having my camera ready…

    1. The Atlantic is still spreading, but as time goes on the parts of the ocean floor most distant from the spreading center (the Mid-Atlantic Ridge) become more and more dense due to cooling. (This is why the ocean becomes deeper away from the ridge.) Eventually the density of those distant parts approaches that of the underlying mantle and the crust will start to subduct, causing the Atlantic to start to shrink. It’ll be a while before we notice anything amiss.

      I’m not clear on what will happen to the current spreading center at the Mid-Atantic ridge—whether it will become inactive or whether it will continue to add new ocean floor, but more slowly than the subduction taking place at the distal parts of the basin. Maybe someone more up-to-date on plate tectonics can fill in the gap.

    2. Getting a bit pedantic, the sun won’t explode. It’s outer layers will expand as it turns into a red giant, roasting earth, but solar-mass stars don’t explode, they need to be more massive to do that.

    3. I thought the discussion of that 250 My projection was way too biased. “Up to 92% of THE LAND MASS ON EARTH could be uninhabitable to mammals in 250 million years.” Animals and plants in the ocean will do just fine thank you.

  2. On this day:
    1600 – Euridice, the earliest surviving opera, receives its première performance, beginning the Baroque period.

    1683 – Immigrant families found Germantown, Pennsylvania in the first major immigration of German people to America.

    1854 – In England the Great fire of Newcastle and Gateshead leads to 53 deaths and hundreds injured.

    1903 – The High Court of Australia sits for the first time.

    1920 – Ukrainian War of Independence: The Starobilsk agreement is signed by representatives of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Makhnovshchina.

    1927 – Opening of The Jazz Singer, the first prominent “talkie” movie.

    1973 – Egypt and Syria launch coordinated attacks against Israel, beginning the Yom Kippur War.

    1976 – Premier Hua Guofeng arrests the Gang of Four, ending the Cultural Revolution in China.

    1976 – Dozens are killed by Thai police and right-wing paramilitaries in the Thammasat University massacre; afterwards, the Seni Pramoj government is toppled in a military coup led by Sangad Chaloryu.

    1979 – Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit the White House.

    1981 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is murdered by Islamic extremists.

    1985 – Police constable Keith Blakelock is murdered as riots erupt in the Broadwater Farm suburb of London.

    1995 – The first planet orbiting another sun, 51 Pegasi b, is discovered.

    2007 – Jason Lewis completes the first human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth.

    2010 – Instagram, a mainstream photo-sharing application, is founded.

    2018 – The United States Senate confirms Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court Associate Justice, ending a contentious confirmation process.

    Births:
    1510 – John Caius, English physician and academic, co-founded the Gonville and Caius College (d. 1573). [His surname is pronounced “keys” – the college is the fourth oldest of the 31 at University and also one of the wealthiest.]

    1729 – Sarah Crosby, English preacher, the first female Methodist preacher (d. 1804).

    1744 – James McGill, Scottish-Canadian businessman and philanthropist, founded McGill University (d. 1813).

    1820 – Jenny Lind, Swedish soprano and actress (d. 1887).

    1866 – Reginald Fessenden, Canadian engineer and academic, invented radiotelephony (d. 1932).

    1887 – Le Corbusier, Swiss-French architect and painter, designed the Philips Pavilion and Saint-Pierre, Firminy (d. 1965).

    1897 – Florence B. Seibert, American biochemist and academic (d. 1991).

    1900 – Vivion Brewer, American activist and desegregationist (d. 1991).

    1901 – Eveline Du Bois-Reymond Marcus, German-Brazilian zoologist and academic (d. 1990).

    1908 – Carole Lombard, American actress (d. 1942).

    1910 – Barbara Castle, English journalist and politician, First Secretary of State (d. 2002).

    1914 – Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian ethnographer and explorer (d. 2002).

    1914 – Joan Littlewood, English director and playwright (d. 2002).

    1928 – Flora MacNeil, Scottish Gaelic singer (d. 2015).

    1939 – Melvyn Bragg, English journalist, author, and academic. [Still leading intelligent live discussions on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time on a dizzying array of subjects – yesterday’s was about plankton, next week’s will be on the Federalist Papers.]

    1942 – Britt Ekland, Swedish actress and singer.

    1947 – Millie Small, Jamaican singer-songwriter (d. 2020). [Best known for her 1964 hit “My Boy Lollipop”.]

    1948 – Gerry Adams, Irish republican politician.

    1954 – Bill Buford, American author and journalist.

    1965 – John McWhorter, American academic and linguist.

    2000 – Jazz Jennings, American internet personality. [The subject of the reality TV show I Am Jazz, following the poor kid’s “gender-affirming care” – a real tragedy.]

    I’ve looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes:
    1536 – William Tyndale, English Protestant Bible translator (b. c. 1494).

    1892 – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet (b. 1809).

    1951 – Will Keith Kellogg, American businessman, founded the Kellogg Company (b. 1860).

    1962 – Tod Browning, American actor, director, screenwriter (b. 1880). [His film Freaks (1932) is astonishing.]

    1968 – Phyllis Nicolson, English mathematician and physicist (b. 1917).

    1973 – Dennis Price, English actor (b. 1915).

    1979 – Elizabeth Bishop, American poet and short-story writer (b. 1911).

    1980 – Hattie Jacques, English actress and producer (b. 1922).

    1985 – Nelson Riddle, American composer, conductor, and bandleader (b. 1921).

    1989 – Bette Davis, American actress (b. 1908).

    1992 – Denholm Elliott, English actor (b. 1922).

    2014 – Diane Nyland, Canadian actress, director and choreographer (b. 1944).

    2017 – David Marks, British architect, designer of the London Eye (b. 1952).

    2018 – Montserrat Caballé, Spanish soprano (b. 1933).

    2019 – Ginger Baker, English drummer (b. 1939).

    2020 – Eddie Van Halen, Dutch-American guitarist, songwriter, and producer (b. 1955).

    2020 – Johnny Nash, American singer-songwriter (b. 1940).

  3. Did my comment get lost? I had to log in all over again. I meant to say that I was surprised the Atlantic, which is currently getting wider due to magma coming up from the central ridge, will eventually disappear, apparently due to movement of tectonic plates. I also was surprised to read that life will already be impossible in only 250 million years, and not the 5 billion years until the Sun explodes. And I was going to have my camera ready…

  5. … all of a sudden Joe Biden has decided to build new barriers along our border with Mexico, and barrier [sic] are what he campaigned against as President!

    “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” — John Maynard Keynes (attributed).

    1. There was a comment from the President that he had to build the section of wall because the money to do so was already allocated during the previous Admin. Perhaps that is as he says, or perhaps that is his way of deflecting.

        1. The president has no say in whether or not to spend money per an approved budget, per long standing law and precedent. When a budget is made and approved it becomes law just like any other legislation. POTUS is required to uphold the law, which means spending exactly as per the budget.

          Not spending money as per the approved budget is one of the several things that gave Nixon a dirty reputation. He decided not to spend money on budget items he didn’t approve of. That incident inspired a whole new renovation of the laws and rules pertaining to budgeting and spending with the specific intention of more rigidly restricting the president’s role in spending to meticulously executing the budget.

          However, there is a wrinkle in this particular case. The barrier building in question has been tied up in delays, at least some of which have to do with federal regulatory agencies. One issue, for example, is inhibiting the movement of wildlife. What Biden did was issue an Executive Order instructing those government agencies to green-light the building despite whatever issues with the project they were considering.

          I’ve no idea if the legal requirement of the President to enact approved budgets means that Biden needed to do that in order to comply with the laws on spending or not.

      2. He does have to, unless Congress changes its mind about it. Otherwise he is embargoing the funds, or something, which is not allowed anymore. It is from money allocated in the Trump administration, and it has never been cancelled, so they have to spend it.

    2. Well, if the “facts” are that “I’ll lose my reputation if I don’t do this”, that’s not so great. And, of course, the Democrats in Congress, who far outnumber the President, haven’t “changed their minds.”

    3. Politically, it seems to me that this is a boon for Trump. He and his supporters will be able to say that Trump was correct all along, and that it took an aging “slow Joe” years to come to the the same conclusion. Why elect Biden, they will say, when you can have a president who knows what to do and does it decisively?

      Note that the above is *not* my position on Biden. It’s what I would say if I were competing against Biden for the White House. Not a good look for Biden, nor for Kamala Harris who was charged with fixing the border on day 1. They are very vulnerable to being defeated.

      1. Mebbe so, Norman, but keep in mind that “build a wall!” was not some thought-through policy position of Trump and his advisors; it was merely a line that someone in TrumpWorld suggested that the Donald add onto a speech at the last minute before Trump took the stage at one of his rallies.

        The line got such a red-meat response from Trump’s rally-goers that it quickly became a staple of his fulminating before the crowd. When the red-meat effect of “build a wall!” showed signs of fading, Trump added the line “and make Mexico pay for it!” even through he had no plan (and there wasn’t a chance in hell) of making Mexico actually do so.

        Eventually the two lines — “build a wall!” and “make Mexico pay for it!” — became part of the call-and-response that Trump’s crowds came to expect at his rallies (much like the portion of the show in which Trump would direct his supporters to turn on the press in its penned-in section and start screaming epithets — the “two minute hate” segment, if you will, though Trump’s crowds generally kept at it somewhat longer). It was all just a way for Trump to keep his crowds het up while he was on stage (a technique long popular among demagogues and wannabe dictators).

  6. “… Joe Biden has decided to build new barriers along our border with Mexico..”

    To keep people in.

  7. I think Democrats need to decide if they want open borders or an expanded welfare state — I don’t think the math works for both.

  8. The Nature article states the repositioning of the continents over the next 250my as a fact. The reality is that this is the prediction of one (or more maybe) dynamic Earth model(s) I suspect. One great new option for teaching and learning in our time is that the computational power of computers can integrate dynamic models and present graphical images of results over vast periods of time, allowing us to see both past and possible futures. K-12 STEM curriculum needs to take advantage of this capability and move away from memorization of simple static historical facts to the dynamic histories of the Earth system including the assumptions made in the various math models used. Math courses for new teachers and students should include math methods used on computers to do these calculations.

    1. Yes, unlike climate modelling I suppose that there aren’t enough predictions to use ensemble forecasting, but it would be interesting to see whether the results given for 250 million years in the future are typical or an outlier.

      1. Yep, and instructive for the kids to see what variables and assumptions impact the outcomes and how much. With simple to use, inexpensive software such as Stella, they can develop ensembles and maybe even sensitivities of “what if” variations.

  9. I believe the U.S. continues to have at least 2 locations in Turkey that have been in service for many years. The larger one is Incirlik AB not far from Adana. The other is at Izmir, Turkey, called Cigli Air Base. I spent a month in Izmir way back in 1969. Cigli is pronounced Chili. They call these shared or combined air bases because the Turkish air force also uses the bases.

  10. A few observations on Joe’s announcement about a wall. First, what has happened at the border is exactly what the Biden Administration has wanted. In practical terms, it is their policy. Building a wall doesn’t mean the policy has changed. Second, it takes time to build, and it’s distinctly possible that little or no wall will actually be built. Third, this does nothing to deal with the existing millions of illegals that have already been released into the U.S. that are an issue, even assuming the wall is built quickly. It is almost literally closing the barn door after that horse has got out. Finally, the Biden Admin just old off $300 Million worth of materials purchased by the Trump Admin to build the wall. They got $2 Million for them. Add replacing those to the lead time for construction.

  11. If the politicians, either Republican or Democrat, were serious about stopping the flow of illegal immigrants they would pass a law that would make it a felony to employ an illegal immigrant. If enforced, that would in all probability be much more effective than a wall.
    These employers, big or small, want this cheap labour. Note, I understand that many enterprises (such as farms) have not much choice, either that or bankruptcy. That is probably the reason such a law is not passed.

  12. Part of the problem with “anti-racism” is that it is a misnomer. What these people advocate should be called “counter-racism”, which is just racist policies enacted against a different group, in this case White and Asian folks.
    Kendi has been pretty explicit about that.

    I worked in both anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism. Examples of the former are robust locks and vehicle barriers. The latter might involve hunting down Jihadis with machine guns or drones.

    Anyway, most modern people are pretty disgusted by racism. Once it dawns on them that that is what this really is, they should turn away from it. I think the same goes for “Anti-Fascism”, which is a similar misnomer.

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